This combination of head and heart forged an intuition that became catalytic. Just over a decade ago he began to suspect that four bottles of wine with the initials of Thomas Jefferson engraved on the bottles, which he had paid $400,000 in the 1980s, were counterfeit. He assembled a team of former agents from the FBI, CIA, MI6 and Scotland Yard, alongside glue experts, label printers, cork chemists and nuclear physicists who could analyse a wine’s chemical composition. It cost him millions of dollars, but as a result it raised industry standards and secured better protection for future collectors.
The Cellar
Owning over 18,000 bottles, Mr. Koch — who already pruned his cellar in 1999, then again in 2016, selling some 20,000 bottles at the latter — believes it’s time for the next generation to enjoy the spoils of his years of collecting.
Bilbey explains that among the most revered Bordeaux and Burgundy wines from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries being offered at Christie’s are a Château Cheval Blanc 1947, Margaux 1953, Petrus 1982, Latour 1959 en magnum and a six-litre methuselah of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti La Tâche 1996. ‘That’s 54 glasses of one of the greatest wines on planet earth,’ he adds.